Kamala Harris & 4 other 'taboo's to include in your marketing!

Hey, new listener. Thanks so much for checking us out. And there's a good chance you have adhd, so I quickly wanted to ask you to please follow this podcast in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or whichever app you're listening to this on, don't leave it until later because you will forget. Thank you, Squirrel. Squirrel. In this episode, we're going to talk about why I don't want you listening to this podcast if you're going to vote for Trump in this election. Hi, I'm Katie McManus, business strategist and money mindset coach, and welcome to the Weeniecast. Squirrel. I'm proud to announce that those of us at the Weeniecast hereby endorse Vice President Kamala Harris for president in 2024. Now, we're aware that no one asked us, and we're also aware that it's just the two of us, and I'm the only American. But I felt it was really important to start this episode on that note, because in this episode, we're talking about bringing up taboo topics in the marketing of your business and how it's actually kind of a good thing to do. Let's get real about something here. Small businesses do not have a marketing problem. We have a memorability problem. And as a small business owner, you have a choice. You can continue talking about the same shit that all your competitors are talking about, or you can share the occasional weird, different taboo topic and your opinions on it and have people actually remember who the fuck you are. And the best thing about doing this is you scare away people who you don't want to work with anyway. I bet you after that first line, people who are Trumpers, I doubt I have many who listen to me anyway. But I bet you they disconnected. I bet you they hit stop and they unfollowed this podcast and they went on their merry way. And that's fine by me. But I also bet you, those of you who are also excited for Vice President Kamala Harris to become President, Kamala Harris might have leaned in a little bit closer, which, I mean, you're. It's a podcast. It's not like you're leaning in closer to me. Maybe you leaned in closer to your phone. I don't know. How do people do that? But it made you feel like we were more aligned, and that's the goal. We're going to go through a couple taboo subjects that I encourage you if you. If you've been on the fence thinking, oh, maybe I could share this, or maybe not to just go for it. I'm going to talk through a few different ways you can do so without being super vulnerable. And I want to talk through first why this works. I want you to imagine that every single person, including yourself, is walking around with an invisible circle surrounding their head. And in the circle is everything that you love. It's everything that you like, that you feel aligned to. So in my circle of influence, for instance, you'd have the celebrities Taylor Swift, Ryan Reynolds, and Ryan Gosling. I absolutely adore all three of them. And of course, a bunch of others. The TV shows, the West Wing, Bridgerton, the Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. Except not the fourth season. Just. It was very disappointing. Let's not go there. You'd have other things, like really good homemade jelly donuts, coffee, but not from Dunkin Donuts. You'd have places like Rome and Montpellier, France, and Paris and San Francisco and New York and Cape Cod. All places I love. And of course, the people that I care about, my friends, my family, the people that I feel close to, my clients, anyone whose side I feel on, you know, all the different authors and books that I absolutely love, you can't say anything bad about them. Now, other people's sphere of influence may include other things, like sports teams, if they know anything about sports, could also be more heavily into music and have a bunch of different albums on there. Now, here's the thing about our sphere of influence is that when we hear someone express positive feelings about the things that we have in our sphere of influence as well, we feel closer to that person. We trust them more. We feel more aligned to who they are. And when someone says something bad about anything in our sphere of influence, we actually feel like they've become the enemy. If I hear that you don't like coffee, like, I might think you're kind of a sociopath, but I'm probably not going to hate you. Versus if you tell me that you don't like Ryan Gosling, I'm sorry, we can't be friends anymore. It's not going to work. Unfollow me. Go away. It may sound silly, but psychologically, when your sphere of influence has a lot of overlap with sphere of influence of other people, you're far more likely to trust each other, like each other, and have relationships together. And I don't mean romantic relationships only. I mean friendships, business relationships. This is one of the reasons why, when companies really prioritize hiring from a diverse pool of candidates for their sales teams, they actually tend to increase their sales numbers dramatically. Because instead of having, like, the Same type of person selling to all the diverse customers that they possibly have. They have a team of really diverse human beings who have very different spheres of influence, who can connect with customers on different levels. That, my friends, is how you hit higher sales numbers. Because people buy from people that they like and trust. And of course you're going to scare some people away. You are absolutely going to scare some people away. And that is perfectly okay. It is perfectly fine to scare people away. And I'll use some numbers to give you an example here. So I speak English. I also speak a little French, but not well enough to provide any kind of service in French. Okay? So I'm limited to only people who speak English, all right? And so I just looked up how many English speakers there are in the world today, and there are 1.446 billion people who speak English. Now of course, like, let's discount that. Some are going to be too young to work with me, some are going to be too old to work with me, and all that jazz. So let's just cut it down to like half a billion people could potentially be my clients. That is a lot of people. That is too many people. I would never be able to help that many people in my entire life. Like, even if I. I magically got turned into an immortal, like a vampire or something, like they would die before I had a chance to help them start a business. If I do the math, say I work with like 15 one on one clients per year and I work for another 30 years. That's only 450 people that I can help one on one in the next 30 years. My group programs even have a cap in them. You know, really, I guesstimate the, the breaking point will go between 40 and 60 people in my group programs before I'm not able to give the right amount of attention to each and every person. So let's just say I have 50 people in each program for the next 30 years as well. That's still only 1500 people. So added together, I can realistically only help 1,950 people in the next 30 years and still provide an excellent service that I actually help them start their business and create a life that they actually want. I'm pretty sure out of a half a billion people, I can find 1950 people. The key here is they have to be able to find me. They have to be able to see me sharing about something that I love or that I believe or that I stand for and think, wow, I like the same thing. I believe in the same Thing I stand for the same thing. I should connect with her. I should follow her content. And then over time, they can start learning what it is that I do for work. Over time, they can understand that I help people exactly like them with the exact problems they have get to a better place. So when you think about sharing the taboo shit that people advise you not to talk about when you're talking about your business, I say that's bullshit. I say that's maybe important when you're a massive conglomerate like Target or Coca Cola, because your market is pretty much everyone. But even then, I think they would be better served if they stood up for some more shit. Let's dig into some taboo topics that I urge you to start talking about if you're brave enough. And I bet you it'll help you get clients. So first and foremost, we're going to dive right into it. Politics. What are your politics? Who are you voting for in this upcoming election? What do you believe in when it comes to politics? What issues really matter to you? It's an unfortunate state of affairs in the United States right now that if I talk about anti racism, if I talk about women's rights and autonomy, to make choices about our own bodies and our own reproductive health, if I talk about the rights of LGBTQ folks, I tend to scare away a certain party. The members of that party don't align with me. And you know what? I'm so happy to scare them away ethically. As a coach, when you're working with a client, one of the things that you have to be able to say with complete honesty is that you want your client to succeed. And personally, if I think that someone's going to make a ton of money and then turn around and vote and donate to politicians who are going to take away my personal rights and the rights of women and the rights of LGBTQ folks, and who are going to make the world far more dangerous for people who aren't white. I can't honestly say that I want them to succeed, and it would be unethical of me to take their money anyway. And really, for people who don't care about politics, who don't care about these issues, they're not my ideal clients either. I have a deep passion for helping people who want to step into their power in the world to make it a better place and to do so through their business, to do so through work that they love, but also to do so as citizens of the world. And the first step to being able to do any of that is to give A you have to care. So talking about politics for me, talking about the issues that I care about is a cornerstone of my business because it ensures that I'm attracting people who also want to make a difference for the better, who also want to make this world safer and more equal for everyone, and who want to make a lot of money doing work they love. Can't forget about that bit. So I urge you, talk about politics. If you care about them, talk about them. Share your beliefs. Share what you stand for. Allow people to opt in and opt out. I promise you, you will have so much more fun and feel so much more fulfilled working with people who feel aligned to how you believe the world should function. And you'll also warn the rest of us if you have really shitty beliefs that we shouldn't give you our money. Please and thank you. So the weeniecast is a podcast from people with ADHD who are entrepreneurs, business owners who want to succeed using their strengths as a person with ADHD and also want to bypass a lot of the bull that we have to deal with. This brings me to my next point is mental health. Hey, quick question. Did you follow this podcast on your favorite podcast app yet? It takes just a few seconds. I personally love Apple podcasts, but you can find us anywhere, even on YouTube. So. So, as the kids say, smash that button and make sure you never miss an episode. Mental health is a super taboo topic, we're told from a very early age. And maybe it's not even explicit. Maybe it's just something that we observe is like, don't let anyone know that you go to therapy. Don't let anyone know that you're struggling. You know, fake it till you make it was some advice that I got early on from a therapist when I was going through a depression because I think she thought it would help me. But I took it as something that like, oh, well, I can't show people that I'm struggling. I can't show people that I am dealing with mental unwellness right now. And I can't tell you how empowering it was when I dropped that bullshit. And I can't tell you how many people it actually helped to be open about my struggles with anxiety, my struggles with adhd, my struggles in the past with ptsd. When it comes to sharing about mental wellness or mental illness, there's always this question of how vulnerable is too vulnerable. And let me tell you, there's no right or wrong answer. There's what's right for you and what's wrong for you. Okay? What's right for one person might not be right for you. Someone may feel very, very comfortable going on LinkedIn and sharing about their past struggles with addiction, whereas you may find it still a little too vulnerable to talk about how you struggled with anxiety in the past. You get to decide what that line is for you. But here's the cool thing about talking about mental wellness and mental illness and any kind of psychological diagnosis or struggles is that when you share, you normalize it for the people around you. When you share, you make it safe for others to talk about what they're going through. You create a space. You know, a lot of my clients work in very kind of intimate services where their clients are either going through, like a health transformation or they're investing in executive or leadership coaching. And they have to be very vulnerable in these sessions. And getting clients online for something like that is pretty difficult, you know, if you're not willing to first be vulnerable in your content. Because what you're basically asking a bunch of strangers on the Internet to do is to be super brave and book a call with a stranger and divulge all the details of their life to you. Sharing stuff that is really hard to share with another human being, things that you don't like about yourself, things that you feel shame around, the deep dream that you have that you don't believe is possible for you. You're asking strangers on the interwebs to just book a call with you, a perfect stranger, and share all that stuff without knowing anything about you, without knowing anything about your past and whether you're a safe space for this. Yeah, tell me how that goes. You know, we have this. We have this belief that for other people to see us as a good resource to help them with their lives, we have to be perfect. And that's absolute bull. When you show up as perfect, the standard you actually set for everyone around you is that they have to be perfect as well before they even reach out to talk to you. If you listen to this podcast, I bet you have some personal development books on your bookshelf. And I've said this before, I'll say it a gazillion times more. Go and check out the intro or the first chapter of those books. Most of the time, it's not about how perfect someone's life was. The. The amazing schools that they went to, the great jobs they've had, like those may play a part, but more often it's about how they fucked up royally. It's about how they crashed and burned their life and how they crawled out of the deepest, darkest hole and made all these good things happen. Screwing things up and being imperfect actually builds so much more trust and credibility than being this perfect version of yourself. For example, I want you to think about a woman who's 35, she's just had her third baby, she's postpartum, she has this five month old baby who is not sleeping well. She has two other kids under five, they go to day care, thank God, or else she'd probably go insane. And she's looking in the mirror and she's like, you know what? I really want to lose £20. I want to get back into a body that I feel more comfortable in. I know I'll feel more confident and I know I'll feel healthier. Who do you think she's more likely to want to work with? The 22 year old perfect personal trainer who's 110 pounds soaking wet, who's always had the most perfectly sculpted body, who's super happy and go lucky all the time and who works out seven days a week. Or the 40 year old personal trainer who also also has a few kids, who has also struggled with her weight since becoming a mom, who also deals with the sleepless nights that come along with being a parent and who understands the struggles that this woman is going through right now. Now she doesn't have the perfect body and she doesn't have the perfect diet and she doesn't work out seven days a week. By all accounts, the 20 something year old who has the perfect body should technically be her. Go to. Here's the thing, she's not going to feel comfortable being vulnerable with that personal trainer. She's not going to feel like that personal trainer will understand all the nuances and struggles of her life. Whereas the second personal trainer, the imperfect one, that's who she's going to trust. So as you're thinking about talking about what you struggle through, you know, I want you to think through like what have you already processed? What doesn't feel really vulnerable and icky to share right now? You know, stuff from when you're a kid, stuff from high school, stuff from your early 20s, things that you have seen the other side of and have some context for and some perspective on. You can absolutely share some anecdotes about those struggles in your past. And let me tell you, it will build so much trust and connection with the people, people who want to work with you and it'll make it so much easier for them to reach out to you and be vulnerable on a call with you so that you can really easily determine if they're the right client for you. But again, this is up to you. You get to do so within the boundaries of your own comfort. Because while we are here to not be weenies, we're not here for vulnerability hangovers. There's no need to go there. Other taboo topics that you can talk about that will make your brand far more memor, that will make your name far more memorable, that will make you the person that people think of as like this friend that they know from on the online times are honestly talking about relationships, talking about sex, talking about the good, the bad and the ugly. Last year I went to this LinkedIn event in Denver, Colorado, and it was genuinely a bunch of people that I had never met in person before. These are all people that were showing up in my comment section. I would comment on their stuff. And let me tell you, I, I walked into this event and I didn't really recognize many people because it looks different from their profile picture, right? And also it's just different. Like they might have looked very similar to their profile picture, but it's very different going from 2D to 3D. And also LinkedIn has very small profile pictures. I would talk to them and like, we'd kind of like be sussing out who's this person. I feel like I know them, but I don't really know who they are. And they'd figure it out usually before I did because I was dealing with multitude issues and I was a little out of it and I cackled at how many people are like, oh my God, you're the weenie lady who shares dating stories. And I think I've probably shared maybe 5 dating stories on LinkedIn in my entire 4 years of being super active on the platform. And I always share them in the context of like, here was a terrible date that I went on and here's a sales lesson that you can take from it. Here's how this guy did not close the deal and why they lost the sale with me. And I do so from a place of like, I, I don't divulge any personal information on their part, I don't share their name, I make fun of the whole situation. I, I, I genuinely write these posts as I'm kind of giggling to myself. But they're real, they're real experiences that I've had and I use them to kind of showcase here's my expertise, here's my philosophy on sales, here's how I see that conversation going and how it could be better. They didn't remember that I was a business coach necessarily. They didn't remember that I help people with their money mindset, but they did remember me. And someone who remembers you is far more likely to end up being your client or to refer business to you than someone who has no idea who the you are. You can share whatever part of you it feels correct to share. There's no right or wrong way of doing this. There's the right and wrong way for you to do this. So full permission here to experiment. Full permission here to write something and sit on it for a while and see how you feel after a few days and post it later. Full permission to write something that's just on the edge of your comfort zone and to post it and think, oh, my God, I can't believe I did that, and then just go and delete it. Sure, the Internet lives forever, but like, you know, if you have 5,000 followers on LinkedIn, no one gives a. If you posted something too vulnerable and then deleted it five minutes later, the pundits are on. CNN are going to be like, guess what? What Doreen Smith posted on LinkedIn today. You'll never believe it. She shared about her divorce. How shameful. They don't care. They have bigger fish to fry than you. Doreen, calm down now. And of course, we're talking taboo topics. You know, another taboo topic that you can absolutely talk about is money. Oh, what am I going to say next? Well, you'll have to keep listening to find out. But first, squirrel, Squirrel, Squirrel, Squirrel. If you're enjoying this episode, would you do me a small favor? Will you please leave me a review? Don't worry, it's super easy to do and it only takes a few minutes. You can leave your comments in Apple Podcasts, Castbox, Spotify, and Podchaser. Just go to weeniecast.com reviews and scroll till you find the chosen app. That's weeniecast.com forward/reviews. And of course, we're talking taboo topics. You know, another taboo topic that you can absolutely talk about is money. And it doesn't have to be about how much money you make, which is a little gaggy, honestly, because who cares? But talk about something that you spent the most money on that you've ever spent in your life. You know, talk about how proud you were to buy your first house. Talk about the shame of being in credit card debt when you were in your twenties. I've been there. I love it when people talk about that stuff, because even though I Coach people on money mindset. And I've done a ton of work on my own. I still love seeing that reminder that I'm not alone, not the only one who made really bad money choices in their 20s. If you want to align your sphere of influence with your potential ideal clients out there, sharing your unpopular opinions, sharing how much you hate a band for whatever reason, sharing how you think a certain book series is stupid even though everyone else seems to like it. You know, sharing how maybe you've never watched Star wars, which whenever I tell people that, they get really upset. I can't tell you how many people have like, vowed to make me watch Star Wars. And now it's just like this little game that I'm playing that I'm just like, no, it's not going to happen. And now I'm wondering how many messages I'm going to get after the fact saying, you haven't watched Star Wars. What do you mean? I also haven't seen the Godfather series. And in contrast, you can also share all the things that you love, the things that you nerd out about, the stuff that honestly makes you a bit of a weirdo. And lastly, this is kind of a hard one for a lot of people, but sharing bever religion. Religion is a big one. There are so many creators, influencers, coaches, business owners who use their Christianity in their content. And, you know, whenever I see that, I think that's so good for them. I mean, it doesn't align to me. I'm not religious, but good for them for incorporating something that feels super aligned to them. On the other side, the stuff that I feel really aligned to is the witchy. Talk to me about the spells, spelly armors. Talk to me about the new moon rituals. Talk to me about the tarot cards and the astrology and all that stuff. I'm super down for it. Share with me your religious practices. Share with me this and that. Neither one is bad. You want people who are not on board with that stuff. If you're really, really passionate about it, you want to scare them away. You want to make it clear that your work is not for them because it's never going to be the right fit. And I know sharing this stuff can feel kind of ick, can feel really scary. It's stuff that's very personal to you. And what if people reject you for that? Well, if people reject you for who you are, let me tell you, the way they talk to themselves is way worse. The stories they tell themselves about what makes them lovable and deserving and worthy would break your heart. The thing that you can actually do to help them is to stand in your power and be exactly who the fuck you are, knowing that you deserve to have all the business and all the incredible clients and all the good things to come your way. Regardless of who you are, regardless of how imperfect you are, regardless of what your beliefs are, they may not like it. They may write really nasty comments. They might DM you, they may talk behind your back. But hopefully someday it'll get through to them that, oh my God, that person's not afraid to be who they are. And if they're not afraid to be who they are, why am I being so afraid of being who I am? What's wrong with my identity? What's wrong with everything that I like and dislike and feel aligned to and believe in? If they can share all this taboo stuff and still be successful and still find their people out there in the world, maybe, just maybe, that's possible for me, too. What a cool little gift to give the world, even if it does take them a while to unwrap it. So, my friends, with this, I urge you, go be memorable. Go share taboo sh T. Talk politics, talk religion, talk sex, and share it with me. Especially if you're supporting Kamala Harris this election season. Well, let me tell you something. When I am President of the United States and when Congress passes a law to restore those freedoms, I will sign it into law. We are not playing around. Squirrel. Squirrel. Squirrel. Squirrel. If you're enjoying this episode, would you do me a small favor? Will you please leave me a review? Don't worry, it's super easy to do and it only takes a few minutes. You can leave your comments in Apple Podcasts, Castbox, Spotify, and Podchaser. Just go to weeniecast.com reviews and scroll till you find the chosen app. That's weenicast.com reviews.